


Pierced Hearts

by TheDarkFlygon



Category: Caduceus | Trauma Center Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Moving On, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22817824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkFlygon/pseuds/TheDarkFlygon
Summary: Paraskevi dug a hole in the hearts of many, many people.
Relationships: Derek Stiles/Angela "Angie" Thompson
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	Pierced Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> What's that I hear? You say it's been done before? Sorry, can't hear you over the noise of my body suddenly craving angst.  
> Okay, to be fair, I saw a picture of some canon character death and I was suddenly invaded by a want to make the people I love suffer. The idea originally came to me when kind-of pressuring my good pal Emmy to show us the game over screen for 6-4 on stream because I was confused about it. I just wrote it like 4 days later on a whim lmao.  
> This is like the opposite of a fix-it fic. A break-it fic? It's so extra too, holy shit. I almost made myself depressed writing it.

It burrowed into the heart.

Despite everyone’s best efforts, she watched an arrow shoot straight through someone’s life, ending it immediately, as a shriek deafened everyone in the room. Still, the surgeon didn’t give up, trying to reassure her with words she could have only half-believed in considering the scowl on her face, the calmness in her voice only a façade to hide the true panic she must have felt while her eyes lit up with a somewhat familiar purple flash.

It was too late anyway. The monitor continued screeching.

_“Time of death: 9:41PM,” she forced herself to state on a choking sob as she gave the surgeon the patient’s chart._

The immediate aftermath was obfuscating _silence_. Nobody knew what to tell anyone else, perhaps because they didn’t know what to tell themselves in the first place. The director was urgently contacting the US branch with shame all over his face, voice trembling as she could hear her own’s trying to retain his calm. The other doctor in the room could barely hide a smirk that was beyond suspicious, but she didn’t do anything about it, at first: the very recent events had shattered her strength. Her legs were on the verge of collapsing.

She stared at the surgeon for a little while, watching her close down the patient in complete quiet. Her fingers were trembling despite a real attempt at being steady, her scowl worsening into an anguish frown. It was an eerie sight to see such a composed woman, a person so confident in her abilities, suddenly on the verge of breaking down and retaining herself from doing so while she conducted the saddest part of her duties. And, despite her best wish, she couldn’t find herself to pinpoint the responsibility of this tragedy on the sole shoulders of the one who failed to be a saviour.

_“I’m sorry_ ,” _Naomi told her right after the operation ended, the only words she uttered of the entire evening before taking off her scrubs and going to isolate herself in her quarters. She only came back from them for the conference._

She didn’t sleep, that night: she just cried herself to unconsciousness holding on a pair of glasses like they were her lifeline. It may have been the tragic reality of a difficult field to work in, the idea that death will come to us all and sometimes steal people away from the world too early, too unjustly; it still didn’t make her pain subdue. Her heart still felt hollow and she thought she’d wake up from the nightmare any moment, because it had to be a terrible, all too vivid nightmare and nothing else, but that was all there was to it. It was too vivid to _be_ a nightmare.

She got calls from her colleagues in America while her obligations made her stay on the other side of the Pond. Condolences, tears, words of reassurance and encouragement. Life moved on without him and that was all there was to it, in a sense; and yet nobody could bring themselves to say it, not even Victor and his sharp tongue. The news had been badly, badly received in Caduceus USA. She got told their own director had cried too, so it was fine for her to tear up as much as she did.

More news came in waves. She received Dr Kasal’s wedding invitations for the both of them, confirmed her presence and quietly turned down his. She got contacted by his mother, heard her almost blame Dr Kimishima and her for their failure before she broke down into sobs and they found some sort of solace in their shared pain, hung off the phone realizing a woman had lost both her husband and her son.

He was twenty-six and a hero that hadn’t gotten the time to rest after saving the world before it was too late. He became the martyr that got swept away by the sin he had vowed to erase from existence. She didn’t want that, didn’t want his name to be equated to the saints of the past; but that was fate had had in store for him, it seemed, as cruel and unfair as it was. That was all there was to it. It was just unfair. Unfair, unfair, unfair; he deserved to be saved, to have a bright future shining upon him like the sun over the sea, to be able to settle down once GUILT would be gone. Not to be in a body bag before thirty, killed by a manmade worm burrowing straight into his heart like the deadly arrow that kills the villain at the end of a fairy tale. 

The conference they had both been invited to still happened despite the grief in everyone’s hearts. A catastrophe broke out, the second for Caduceus Europe in only a couple weeks, their doom rearing its head. Discussions about relocating the facilities in France or Germany rose up, firing its staff and renewing it entirely were advanced and pondered upon. Not that she heard them directly, as the GUILT breakout in the conference hall snapped Naomi and her into a professional frenzy to fix what could still be fixed. Life moved on without him, and if it wasn’t okay, then it also wasn’t a reason to give up on her own duties: Naomi and she had a slim chance at redemption if they saved the innocent people trapped here.

She got to talk in private with Dr Hoffman before Savato strangled him from the inside. He gave her his condolences, which she gave back immediately after, and they stayed silent for the most part. His surgery went smoothly, Naomi having found back the control she had lost two weeks before, perhaps too suddenly too smoothly; it wasn’t fair that he had had died when it seemed like saving an older man from an arguably more dangerous strain was that easy. Not that Naomi’s collapse after the operation was done didn’t indicate she had pushed on her last strength.

She flew back to the USA alone, the seat next to her empty. She should have cancelled the second ticket, on second thought, but couldn’t bring herself to. In an irrational trance, she figured his spirit may be accompanying her that way, if she gave him a plane seat. It was stupid and nonsensical, yet a way to remain sane and not succumb to painful sobs. It didn’t prevent her from crying again when she imagined what could have been… but she couldn’t spend too long on it.

There was no wake, just a solemn burial where everyone was dressed in black and veiled with grief. The mother was crying over her lost family, surrounded by her kind. Friends and colleagues, former or supposed-to-be current, showed up, sometimes with hair over their faces so the true extent of their pain couldn’t be seen. Former patients and their families came and went, giving condolences, thanking their doctor one last time for saving them. She saw Linda break down, Amy clutch her brother in her arms with tears dropping all over her cheeks, Greg and Cybil Kasal look at the ground and holding hands in unspoken support. Everyone had lost a part of themselves, on that fateful day in the UK.

_“This is nothing short of a tragedy,” her father replied to her with a rasping whisper when she gave him the news in prison, about to cry all over again. Not unlike Naomi, his involvement with GUILT made him look to the ground and shrivel away in shame._

Now that he was gone, Caduceus’s corridors suddenly felt cold, empty, as if the building itself had lost something in Europe. The noise echoed through the halls that the European branch had relocated in France, near a northern city whose name she didn’t remember, under a new director. The smile everyone gave her was bittersweet, laced with feelings they didn’t dare speak out, tainted by the tears they wouldn’t shed in public. It may have been a month already since his last day, the pain had barely subdued. The hole remained and so did her deadly grudge towards Delphi, their messed-up ideology and the lives it had taken for the sake of some deluded corpse’s demented ideas.

_“Let me introduce myself,” a dashing young man only a couple years older than her told her on a gloomy morning. “I’ll be your new surgeon. My name is…” Too dashing. He lacked the clumsiness. “I hope to be on the level of the legendary surgeon who saved the world.”_

She couldn’t remember the name of the new surgeon meant to replace him for a month. He wasn’t a bad person, far from it, talented and serviceable; but he wasn’t _him_ , that was the issue. He couldn’t fulfil the very specific hole he had left in their hearts. He could surely fulfil the role of a surgeon, but not of a colleague, of a friend, of a loved one. Still, she buried her feelings and opened herself up to him little by little, eventually mending her soul with a new relationship. Strictly professional, then strictly platonic; for he could never replace the one who was gone.

_“I wish you were still here,” she whispered in a sob. “You should have still been here.”_

She often found herself going to the cemetery. After work, before an important event, on her day off. No matter what kind of day it was, she found herself in the cemetery, facing the same gravestone, observing the evolution of what decorated it. Right after the burial, it was covered in flowers, framed photographs and plaques of all kinds.

_“If it wasn’t for Delphi, you’d still be here. They got dismantled recently. Good riddance. People like that only deserve to be miserable,” she almost yelled in the middle of the day, looking down with ball-up fists._

The flowers rot fairly quickly, so most of them got removed after some time. She’d always make sure there was at least one on the tomb at all times, often near the one picture they had kept: a happy young man on the day he had graduated from residency, his diploma in his hands, his mentor by his side with a satisfied smile. At least, he’d be remembered smiling, right in the peak of his youth. He wouldn’t have the time to see an eventual downfall, all thanks to some irresponsible maniacs with an agenda to curse society with. It was nobody’s fault but theirs.

_“I wonder what’d be if Naomi had noticed Paraskevi on time,” she told to a casket buried underneath the soil, sipping on a cup of coffee whose bitterness she didn’t feel. “She wouldn’t have quit so suddenly after the conference, if she had, right? I hope she’s doing fine where she is now.”_

What-ifs scenarios kept crossing her mind when she came to the cemetery. Sometimes, she brought a second cup with his name on it and put it next to the framed picture she always cleaned and protected from the rain would it have to fall. They were useless, she knew it, as they’d never be real and things had been said and done; but that didn’t prevent her mind from drifting away into Imaginarium. She always ended up drinking the second cup herself once it’d be cold and disgusting, trying not to sob after she did.

_“I… I almost made a big mistake, two days ago. I was unfocused and we… we almost lost the patient because of it. I stayed indoors, yesterday, and called in sick. I hate that I did. From where you are now, you must be ashamed of me, right?” She whispered with a trembling breath and sobs wracking her frame._

He had become but a name in the media, a reputation and an image. He was the martyr of GUILT and a genius surgeon, but that was it. She was starting to forget the different little quirks on his face and the tone of his voice. She had issues picturing even the simplest things, remembering the pale tone of his newly cold face without his glasses and a mask instead. She missed his warmth as the cold rain of late winter poured over his tombstone and her living body, grasping onto the only cup she had ordered today. He was gone and would never come back, and it had been months; so why hadn’t she moved on yet, like everyone had it seemed?

_“Today, Tyler pranked Victor. Leslie filmed the entire thing giggling. You want to watch? She’s sent me the video earlier. Sidney eventually caught us and scolded us like little kids. David just stared at us in silence as he did. He isn’t used to our hijinks yet,” she told the same tombstone as ever, laughing along to the video she was showing it._

In the end, Angie found relief in talking to a piece of stone. Life moved on without him, and there was no other truth to it; but he’d always remain in a spiritual way. His fate was unfair and her distaste towards Delphi could only subdue with a lot of time; but, at long last, she had started moving on. That was what he’d have wanted, right? Surely he wouldn’t want her to bury herself so young, so alive.

So, in a moment of solace, she made him her advisor, her venting buddy and her confessing booth. After all, if the Romans could ask birds for advice, perhaps she could get some from the hero who saved the world and the person she had grown close to in so little time.

“See you tomorrow, Derek,” she said as she got up, her cup of coffee in hand.


End file.
